I’m probably in the minority, but I think it didn’t. That jumped the shark episode was like a transition into something new. I thought when" Happy Days" really jumped the shark, was when Ron Howard & Donny Most left. That’s when it went down hill a bit. Another bad thing about the later seasons, was that too many stories were focused on Joanie And Chachi. And the later seasons had less and less of Anson Williams.
So when do you Happy Days REALLY jumped the Shark?
You can’t seriously be saying that Happy Days didn’t jump the shark when Fonzie jumped the shark. That was it, that’s where the definition came from, that’s what it’s all about. Jumping the shark is not just about the point of decline in a TV show, that’s inevitable for almost every show, it’s about reaching an absurd apex before that decline begins. That’s what happened on Happy Days.
For me the worst part about the jump was that it was a cliff hanger.
This AV article has a lot to say about it. No one seemed to think the idea was bad.
When watching the episode on live TV with my family when I was a kid, I was more concerned that Fonzie’s leather jacket would be destroyed. I remember my parents laughing that he was actually wearing the jacket on the beach in the salt water, and how stupid that was.
Also, was the shark jumping idea more to take advantage of the fear that Jaws created? Did people think that sharks normally just jumped out of the water and snatched humans? Because looking back, it wasn’t even all that dangerous.
There wasn’t really anything to it at all. The producers knew they had an audience so hypnotically locked onto the show that they could have had Fonzie jump over a hamster on a pogo stick and still pretend that it was a dangerous stunt.
When Fonzie jumped the shark. This isn’t rocket surgery??? The show’s writers ran out of ideas or just wanted to film in California (iirc, the shark jumping was filmed in CA?).
As one of the comments in the article Gothic linked to mentioned, having Fonzie jump over a shark was not something that came out of nowhere. It was only the latest escalation in Fonzie’s increasingly superhuman abilities. They had already done a two-part episode in which he jumped his motorcycle over a bunch of garbage cans. The next year’s season opener would have them going to a dude ranch and Fonzie had to ride a killer bull. And there would be episodes where he brought down mobsters and won a 24-hour dance marathon. Not to mention Mork from Ork.
Happy Days had evolved from a relatively realistic slice-of-life sitcom set in the 50s, into a bizarre fantasy world where a local garage mechanic routinely performed amazing feats of derring-do, and had almost supernatural powers that he could trigger merely by snapping his fingers. The shark-jumping was just one more step in a progression that had already begun.
Looking back at it as an adult, it’s easy to see how ridiculous it is. But watching as a kid, it really did all make perfect sense to me!
Looking at **MrAtoz’s **comments above, I’d agree. It jumped the shark at the point where it quit being a show about Richie Cunningham and his friends and their teenage antics and family and stuff and started being a children’s show about a pompadoured magician.
Fonzie started out as a roughly sketched, but reasonably human character. When his metamorphosis as a character transcended that to the point where he became a cartoon, so to speak, I think that’s the shark hurdling point.
And I don’t care how good a customer he was, if I ran Arnold’s Drive In, I think I’d object to someone who could simply smack the jukebox and instantly start a song without paying for it. Not to mention all the free sodas that rattled down just because Fonzie smacked the soda machine. Wonder how many real world jukeboxes and soda machines paid the price for that?
Once again, I am in the minority in that I think it jumped the shark well before the shark jumping. I think the show declined once Fonzi went from being a minor character who was the local hood/mechanic into the main character. The show was only good for a couple of seasons when it was kind of a watered down American Graffiti for TV.
Where do you think the show was normally filmed? I’ll give you a clue, it wasn’t Milwaukee.
On one of the retrospective shows, someone (producer/writer?) pointed out that the show stayed on the air for quite some time after the infamous episode and was still had high ratings for a while. Arguing that it never jumped the shark.
As if lifespan and ratings automatically means quality. Talk about missing the point.
Bolding mine obviously
So OP, do you think it jumped or not?
To me it was a slow, long jump.
The landing of which was when we realized instead of watching a show about teenagers in the 50s, we are watching a show about an all powerful bikeaphile, in the 70s… sure they still claimed 50s, but wardrobe, hairstyles, Mr C’s Oversized digital watch…etc we saw a modern day setting
I agree with most of this, you’re dead on, with one exception… the trash can jump .
He failed at that… he crashed, tore up his knee, and was scared to walk on it… he was still human
I can’t state if this is “Jumping the Shark” or not, but I lost interest in the show by the second season. I recall seeing the “pilot” for Happy Days when it aired on an episode of Love American Style and liked it, so I definitely tuned i when it began as a weekly half hour show.
I really connected with the premise, that of a teenage boy who was awkward, had to deal with what goes on as a teenager (I was 13 at the time). I loved the family, the characters all of it. Even though it took place in an era that occurred 20 years earlier.
The reason I lost interest, and if pushed to cite a “Jump the Shark” moment is when Fonzie took over the show. He was the most unbelivable, uninteresting (IMO) character and he took over the show. It was no longer a family sitcom centered around Ron Howard’s Richie, it was a goofy sitcom about a greaser named Fonzie.
Yes I do think it jumped the shark. Happy Days jumped the shark when Ron Howard & Donny Most left the show. Then it became the fonzie show.Then as time went on, we saw less and less of Anson Williams. All I can say is that Happy Days shouldn’t have lasted 11 years.
It became the Fonzie show before the first season was over.
Not only did Fonzie jump the shark, but Happy Days was the first TV show to employ the patron saint of shark jumping, Ted McGinley.
Slightly off-topic, but watching the first season episodes nowadays, it’s surprising how “modern” the first season was - a single-camera with realistic indoors and lots of exterior shots (as opposed to the three camera set-up, a very obvious “stagy” Cunningham home or diner set that 1970s sitcoms employed) and realistic stories about awkward teenage years. It almost seems bizarre that everybody thought that making the show about the wacky adventures of the Fonz was an upgrade. And when I mean “everybody”, I mean series producers AND the viewing audience - the show was not a hit at all during its first, IMO best year, and yet it was the number one show in the country around the time Fonzie jumped the shark.
I think the show had already started its decline by the time Fonzie jumped the shark. That’s just the easily defined episode that everyone could point to and say “Yep, it was lousy after this happened”.
It was never the same without Chuck.
But really, it did seem to go on a couple years too long. Once Richie left, that should definitely have been the end.